Saturday, November 21, 2009

First things first

A lot has happened over the past week! And I'm sure that over the next couple of days, most of it will find it's way here. But er certainly need to put first things first...

I've come to find out that there were several people following the countdown. However, once the OB scheduled the c-section 5 days before the due date, that threw the whole count off. AND - it raised a VERY important question that I hadn't considered until it was brought to my attention (thanks dad!). "What are you going to do with the leftover bottles of beer?"

Well - I've been doing some checking and it seems that the answer is more complex than it first seems. It turns out that the Federal Government Family Oversite Committee imposes an early baby withdrawal tax that requires we put back a minimum of 20 bottles of beer. And the IRS (where would we be without them...) imposes an early withdrawal tax of 10 bottles and a penalty tax of 5 bottles and then taxes the penalty tax another 2 bottles (but none of that is "double taxation"). The State of Tennessee has some of the craziest liquor laws I've ever seen and they certainly like to tax their beer. Upon finding out that the Feds were taxing / penalizing us 37 bottles they informed us that the State ABC Board would impose another 13 bottle tax. The good news is that the 13 bottles would take care of all state, county, and local taxes and fees.

So it looks like we are going to have to add 50 bottles back to the fridge for having 5 bottles leftover.

I talked to our local distributor (who is WAY nicer than the tax boys) and he quoted me a price for the 50 bottles of beer. Then he politely inquired as to why I needed the extra 50 bottles (knowing that Mike wouldn't be born 50 days late!). I told him of my circumstance and we agreed that at some point in time the "boys in power" lost site of "for the people - by the people". He agreed to cut me a deal - rather than the 50 bottles of beer, he would give me a pony keg and "massage the paperwork" to make it all work out.

So the end result is that we now have a pony keg (80 bottles of beer!). The unfortunate part is that we might have to make that quick trip to the hospital at any point in time! Certainly not a good time tap the keg. So here's the plan...

Mike will be here on the 1st (maybe earlier! more to come in another post...). After he's here (you will all receive official notice of the arrivial!) everybody needs to migrate over to our house at some point in time to help drain this keg. We can make toasts to Thanksgiving, toasts to Christmas, toasts to babies, toasts to family and friends. The big thing is - this keg absolutely needs to be empty by December 31st. Because you don't want to know what the taxes and penalties will be for waiting until the first of the year...